


Shooting Stars

by Lady of Prompts (Aethelflaed)



Series: BINGO [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angel and Demon True Forms (Good Omens), Asexual Aziraphale (Good Omens), Asexual Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Asexual Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale and Crowley Met Before The Fall (Good Omens), Brief Gabriel (Good Omens), Creation, Crowley Helped Build That Nebula, Fluff, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Pre-Canon, Prompt Fic, Short & Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:27:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25834237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aethelflaed/pseuds/Lady%20of%20Prompts
Summary: During the early days of Creation, one angel gets restless and decides to investigate a newly-formed nebula. But a young Guardian catches him in the act!A little bit of fluff written for Kisses Bingo!--“Well.” The so-called Guardian flickered in embarrassment. “I am a Guardian, but the place I’m meant to guard hasn’t been Created yet. But I still have the, er, the authority to stop you.”“Do you?” The angel stretched himself out, a long streamer of darkness looping lazily around the Guardian of Nowhere. “Stop me from what, though? Have I broken any rules? Have I damaged anything?”“No, but – but that’s not the point.” Pale white wings parted enough to show two hands, nervously gesturing. “There are rules, and the rules say you’re not supposed to be here. If we went around making exceptions…”“We might actually have fun once in a while?” He bent around to smile at the Guardian upside-down. “I invented fun, by the way, or I’m about to. It’s much better than boredom.”
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: BINGO [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2017241
Comments: 14
Kudos: 84
Collections: Kisses Bingo





	Shooting Stars

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Kisses Bingo prompt "Deep kiss" but I decided to take it in an entirely different direction...

The Starmakers swept across the void of space, trailing the fundamental elements of the universe behind them. Already, the depths of the firmament were a rainbow canvas of sulfur and hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen. Now they parted, swirling the elements into infant stars, blowing perfectly spherical bubbles to serve as incubators for each. Everything was precisely ordered, every line and curve exactly according to strict instruction.

At the edge of the nebula-to-be, a smaller figure skittered and fluttered, looking for a way to enter – a dark, unformed shape, sometimes a small dark ball, other times a long ribbon, always with a faint red glow seeping out here and there, hinting at future brilliance. He tried again, sidling into an unwatched corner, only to be immediately blocked by the blinding white light of another Guardian.

“You aren’t supposed to be here,” she said with a flare of winglight.

“Where am I supposed to be?” he countered, already looking for a way around.

“You know perfectly well,” the Guardian chided, pushing him gently back towards the safety of Heaven. “Unassigned angels are to wait until their tasks are ready.”

“But what am I supposed to  _ do _ while I wait?”

“You aren’t supposed to do anything. That’s the point of waiting.”

“Don’t like it. All I do is sit and my mind gets all buzzy with too many thoughts and it’s  _ boring. _ That’s one of my inventions, by the way,  _ boredom. _ You see what happens when you leave us alone?” He darted around again, trying to slip past.  _ “Much _ better to let us go help where we can, isn’t it?”

The Guardian’s light flickered slightly. “You can’t help. You don’t know how.”

“They can teach me! Can’t be that hard. And they’re not doing anything I can’t do, are they?”

Another uncertain flicker. “No. The Starmakers are far too busy to explain things to an interloper. It is best if you wait for your assigned task.” Then, in a softer voice, the Guardian suggested, “Perhaps you can meditate on the glories of Creation while you wait?”

“Nnnnh,” the angel groaned, turning as if to head back. “You know,” he said slowly, “wouldn’t it be  _ easier _ to meditate on the glories from up close? So that I can properly contemplate them. See the details.” He flitted this way and that, form wavering almost hypnotically. “It wouldn’t be  _ disruptive,  _ just me sitting there. Wouldn’t be in the way at all. Surely there wouldn’t be anything wrong with just…a quick look around, would there?”

The Guardian considered this, thinking so hard the brilliant white light became quite dim indeed. Finally, with a sigh, her widest set of wings folded back. “You may look around, but touch  _ nothing, _ and speak to  _ no one.” _

“You got it, boss.” And in a swirl of red-tinted darkness, the angel vanished into the depths of space.

The true majesty of a nebula could never be appreciated by mortal eyes. But to an angel – even a young, unassigned one – it glowed across seven dimensions, the subtle shades of blue and green giving way to wild blooms of gold and silver. A stellar cradle lay just ahead and he skimmed across it, trailing a wing tip just a bit to watch the colors swirl.

There – at the center – the newborn star, glowing a dark red just like him. He fluttered over to investigate, folding himself into an unobtrusive sphere, watching the way atoms collided until—

“You shouldn’t be here.”

He turned to find a pale white figure, dim, almost as misty and insubstantial as the nebula being created around them, flashing three pairs of wings in pretended authority. There wasn’t even a visible  _ halo _ on this one.

“Neither should you.” He turned back to the star just in time to see a dark cool spot form on its surface. Amazing. “Have you seen this?”

“No, I most certainly have not! And I  _ am _ meant to be here, I’m a Guardian.”

“You are?” The angel flitted down to hover in front of the other, hanging in the aether. “No you aren’t, you’re unassigned, same as me. I can tell.”

“Well.” The so-called Guardian flickered in embarrassment. “I  _ am _ a Guardian, but the place I’m meant to guard hasn’t been Created yet. But I still have the, er, the authority to stop you.”

“Do you?” The angel stretched himself out, a long streamer of darkness looping lazily around the Guardian of Nowhere. “Stop me from what, though? Have I broken any rules? Have I damaged anything?”

“No, but – but that’s not the  _ point.” _ Pale white wings parted enough to show two hands, nervously gesturing. “There are rules, and the rules say you’re not supposed to be here. If we went around making exceptions…”

“We might actually have  _ fun _ once in a while?” He bent around to smile at the Guardian upside-down. “I invented fun, by the way, or I’m about to. It’s  _ much _ better than boredom.”

“I don’t know what these words mean. You’re talking nonsense.” The Guardian folded hands and wings and tried to look stern. It was a complete failure. “Fine. What is  _ fun? _ How does it work?”

“Hmmmm. I think…I run, and you try to catch me. And if you do, I’ll leave or whatever else you want. But you have to catch me.”

“I already caught you!”

“Did you?” And with a twist and a flick of his long tail, the angel was gone.

He skimmed low over an incubator bubble, causing the gas to boil and roil in his wake.

He zigzagged through a cluster of infant stars, sending them tumbling into new orbits, casting ripples of X-rays all around.

A dark cloud of dust loomed ahead and he shot through it, stretching it longer and longer into a column, before finally dropping out the bottom – or the top – turning around to find the white light of the Guardian right behind.

“Told you you’d never catch me!”

“I am going slow so I don’t upset anything, you – you scoundrel!”

“I like that.  _ Scoundrel.” _ He ran a circle around the Guardian. “Bet I can make it all the way to that one on the end and back before you can. Ready? Go!” And off he shot, a dark comet hurtling recklessly through the perfectly ordered cosmos, one bright star unshakably on his tail.

Older stars sat here and there, setting off jets of gas where he brushed them, creating their own ripples through the blues and purples around them. A few of them looked ready to burst completely, but the angel didn’t have time to investigate now. He glanced back again and again and still the Guardian kept on his tail, zipping this way and that, trying to find some way to block him. But the angel just coiled and looped, slipping out of whatever trap the other tried to set. He laughed, and while he  _ hadn’t _ invented laughter, he thought he might try to take credit anyway.

There, ahead, the last bright red ball of gas. The angel circled around it almost lazily – one, two, three times – but when he looked back there was no sign of the Guardian.

“Hello?” He pulled himself back into a smaller shape, searching with more care. “Are you still here?” The angel drifted back the way he’d come. The next incubator bubble had been stretched out by his motion, cloud upon cloud towering eternally into the distance. “I’ll go slower if you like, it’s only fun if—”

“Got you!” A dim white figure burst out from behind the young star within, crashing into the angel, tangling them both up in a flurry of wings and limbs, plummeting down, down deeper into space.

“That’s  _ cheating, _ you bastard! We’re supposed to be racing!”

“You never said that. You said I had to catch you, and I did.” The Guardian wiggled, his whole form softer than the clouds of the nebula. “And now you’re in my clutches. You are in  _ so much _ trouble.”

“Am I?” Once again, the angel elongated himself, becoming a ribbon of darkness, but this time the Guardian was ready for him, clutching tight, growing taller and taller to better grasp his prisoner. He was very strong, and in the end, they would up wrapped around each other, spinning through space, and now the Guardian was laughing just as hard as the angel.

“Fine, you got me. Fair cop.” The angel beat his wings one last time – mostly just for the show of it – then settled down in defeat. “What are you going to do to me now?”

“Hmm. This.”

It was a little blossom of warmth, just where the Guardian’s hand rested on the angel. A tiny spark of joy and peace and happiness and a few other emotions that the angel didn’t have names for yet, but would happily get to know better. Everything the Guardian was feeling in that moment, crystalized into a gem of emotion, just there at the edge of the angel’s being.

He pulled it in, pushed it down into the deepest depths of himself, hiding it in swirls of darkness where it would be safe no matter what. Then, shyly, he brushed the tip of a wing across one of the Guardian’s and formed a crystal of his own, filled with the awe he felt at the nebula forming around them, the exhilaration of the chase, and the strange fluttery emotion he had never suspected could exist before. The Guardian accepted it without a word.

Before the angel could think of another question, four brilliantly glowing shapes appeared around them. “What are you two doing here?”

Two were the pure white of Guardians; another the blue and green and gold of a Starmaker; and the last the brilliant violet light of the Archangel Gabriel. The angel quickly untangled himself, contracting to his simple dark shape, trying to look contrite. “I asked! The Guardian at the edge of the nebula said—”

“She had no authority to allow you in here! Look what you did!”

All behind them, the perfect uniformity of the nebula had been stretched and distorted. Some sections puffed into enormous billows; others stretched into pillars and columns; over there, a small black cloud stood out starkly against a brilliant red-white background; three different clusters of stars had been sent to spin around each other in entirely new formations, closer than ever intended.

“Oops,” the angel offered.

“What is your name?” Gabriel demanded.

The angel shrugged. “Don’t have one. Not assigned yet.” Somewhere deep inside, he had thoughts on that subject, but now was not the time to bring them up.

“Your supervisor will be informed, nonetheless. And as for you—" The Archangel turned to the Guardian beside him, who cowered back, shivering and flickering.

“Ugh,” the angel cut in quickly. “Can I leave before you start praising him? I don’t need to hear that.”

“Praising…?” Gabriel asked in confusion.

“Yes! This – this little bastard caught me. Saw what I was doing in the nebula, chased me out, and held me until you got here. Totally ruined my fun. Did I tell you about fun? I just invented it—”

“Enough. Is this true?”

“Ah.” The Guardian of Nowhere glanced around nervously. “Yes, that’s – generally what happened, I think. It was all so quick…”

“Fine. You—” Gabriel waved to the Starmaker. “Escort this troublemaker back to where he belongs. And figure out how long it will take to repair this damage.”

The angel looked once more at the Guardian of Nowhere, and flashed his wings in a friendly salute. He didn’t think the Guardian would respond, but no – there it was, a deliberate flutter, too quick for the others to notice. Then he was off, following the Starmaker back towards more familiar grounds.

Behind him, the Archangel’s faint voice: “Excellent work. What is your name?”

“Ah. Aziraphale, Guardian of…”

“You know,” the Starmaker said, resting a hand on his shadowy form, “I think I might like it as it is. Not as ordered as we’d wanted, but there is a beauty to it. Perhaps this, too, was part of the Plan.”

The angel wasn’t sure what he thought of  _ that, _ but there was a more important question to consider: “Can I tell people I helped build it?”

“If you like.”

“Then yes.” He stroked the tiny crystal of happy emotions that glowed like a star hidden deep in the shadows of his chest. “Yes, I think it should stay exactly like this.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> This was, of course, inspired by the nebula Crowley claimed to have "helped build" - which various Tumblr users have identified as the "Pillars of Destruction," part of the Carina Nebula. And while headcanons usually interpret this as Crowley being a celestial architect, a stellar construction worker, or even an Archangel...I always thought there was at least one other possibility. :)
> 
> (Also - go ahead and Google the Carina Nebula, it is simply outstanding. My descriptions do not do it justice at all.)


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